


red in tooth and claw

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, F/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, boy that's some tags to put together huh, nemesis is not there but its presence is sort of haunting this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:27:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: That thing understood better than its creators. It had the same tenacity as her.
Relationships: Carlos Oliveira/Jill Valentine
Comments: 17
Kudos: 181





	red in tooth and claw

**Author's Note:**

> everyone's writing post-re3make fic so i thought i'd throw in my contribution! i would say this is equal parts character study and...thirst for miss jill valentine. but the sex is pretty clearly indicated so you can skip it.

Jill dozes off in the helicopter. She didn’t think she’d be able to—not after being out cold for two days, not with her adrenaline raging—but her battered body has other ideas.

She dreams about waking up at home to the bright sun and intact walls. They don’t make her feel safe. A wall is nothing, a door even less than that. In her dream she cannot leave the false safety of that room and so she waits. Watches the eyes watching her from outside. Eats her breakfast which tastes of nothing. Feels the crawling itch set in under skin. It’s the worst kind of nightmare, the kind where she has no enemy to fight. She turns on the tv, watches the city burning and the people dying and she can’t move. She’s in a hospital bed for days, convalescing, her mind moving and her body still. Feeling the infection move through her. And that thing is out there too, in its own bed of smoke and blood. Healing. Waiting for her. For the chase to begin again. She can’t do anything. Can’t pull the trigger.

And then it turns into a different kind of dream, the better kind. Where the city is on fire but she ignores it because she has a target—no, she has her prey. She knows where it is, can hear it, can almost smell it. She will kill it before it kills her. With her bare hands. That’s the only way to be sure.

The crowd is a smothering presence around her. Biting, grasping, moving blindly forward. They are unthinking. They don’t see. They’re not predators, they’re bottom-feeders, snapping at anything warm that comes their way. They won’t survive. They’re not even alive.

One of them grabs her by the shoulder, hard, its jaws drawing near her arm. She reaches for her gun—

“—Easy, supercop, wake up.” Carlos’ voice comes into focus. “Jill. Come in. You with me?”

She groans and tries to turn over, smushing her face against the stiff fabric of the helicopter seat. No use. She’s wide awake and everything hurts. “Ugh. Yes.”

“Sorry. You were yelling.” He’s turned as much as he safely can to look at her. The glow of the sunset almost makes it look like he’s caught fire.

Everything hurts and she’s exhausted but she can’t stop smiling. Can’t stop the almost hysterical laugh that bubbles out of her. Carlos’ face scrunches up a little in concern and that just makes her laugh harder because he’s alive to make that face at her, they’re alive and they made it.

“I’m good.” She manages to get out. “Really, I am. My brain’s just in a weird place.” It was the same after the mansion. And then she had put it all away and focused on doing what she needed to do. God, she’s back at square fucking one again and she doesn’t even care. She’s just happy to be here.

“You and me both.” Apparently satisfied she’s not going to lose her shit entirely, Carlos turns back to the horizon. “Hey, I’m sorry. You can sleep more if you want.”

Jill stretches, feels the complaint in her ribs. They’re far away now, but she can still feel heat on her face. “And if I start screaming again?”

“Then I’ll wake you up.” The conviction in his voice makes it clear he’s talking about more than just this. Two days he had waited by her side. She won’t forget it. “Every time.”

Still, she doesn’t sleep. Jill watches the smoldering wreck of the city grow smaller until she could hold it in her palm, then disappear. She can’t stop looking through the windows. Scanning over the ground for signs of movement. Something following, even now.

They decide to land as close to the exclusion zone as they can manage without going in. Neither of them trust it, the offers of quarantine and protection and help. The government had been in bed with Umbrella before. There’s no reason for that to change now. People will have seen their helicopter, of course, but they have enough of a head start to figure out what to do, how to turn themselves over safely. Or how to run. She keeps looking behind them. Just in case.

Deciding what comes next proves more difficult. Going after Umbrella, obviously—Jill intends to burn them out completely, hunt each facility down one by one like that thing had hunted her. But it’s not as easy as just pointing a gun at something. It will take time, and research, and probably money.

Until then, there are survivors. The few who managed to get out, they’ll need help, and the two of them intend to keep helping. Radio says they were all so very lucky, that this outbreak was contained to one city. Now wiped off the earth, to be forgotten. But she doesn’t trust luck. So it’ll be camping in the Arklay mountains for a few weeks, looking for any infected that wandered out, any more little experiments that got loose. To make sure this doesn’t happen again. Maybe local police will have a system worked out, maybe if not she’ll take charge and help them sort it out. Train up volunteers in the basics, at least. But it’s hard for her to trust the cops after everything with the RPD. Really, she just wants her team back. Her family, even broken as it is.

When they find a pay phone she calls Rebecca, and Barry--Chris is still in Europe where she hopes to join him soon, but she leaves a message at his sister’s number. The same message: yes I was in RC, yes I made it out, yes we need to talk and I’ll be in contact soon. She doesn’t say anything about Brad. It’s not the right way to deliver that news, and his absence will speak for itself.

Carlos takes a long time before his turn. Even after all that just happened, he cares about his team as much as she does. The people he trained with weren’t the people that caused this. So she tries to be very gentle when she reminds him that it might be better if he didn’t report in. That, given what Umbrella was willing to do to keep word from getting out, he might be better off if they think he’s dead.

Jill won’t force him, though. In many ways, it’s harder for him. She’s been through this before, quite literally. And at least Irons only suspended her. She has no doubt that if Carlos starts asking questions like she did, he’ll end up in a body bag. Or much worse. Umbrella is fond of using their own people as test subjects. She wraps her arm around his waist and holds a little tighter as he makes his one phone call. To a family member, maybe, he speaks in urgent Portuguese and hangs up quickly. He lets his head drop forward and sighs, exhausted. It’s getting late. The streetlight illuminating the phone booth is sputtering. In the flickers of dark, his skin seems washed out and grey. She keeps her eyes on him, even as she sees things writhing in the shadowed corners. But then he lifts his face to her again and the light illuminates him with warmth. Makes him look alive.

“So, supercop.” He smiles at her, disarmingly charming, but she knows the look in his eyes too well. She’s seen it on every member of her team, has had the same look herself plenty of times back when she had a leader she could trust. “What’s the plan?” It’s the look of someone desperate to be given orders, to have someone else make the crushing decisions that will always have to be made. If not now, someday.

Jill considers. “Shower. Food. Sleep. Then tomorrow we can talk about the plan.”

Their motel room has one bed, barely big enough to be called queen-sized with the ugliest colored blanket she’s ever seen. Jill sits at the end of it, unlacing her boots, and feels a thrill of joy go up her spine at the soft surface. In that moment, she’s certain this is the most comfortable bed she will ever lay in for the rest of her life.

Carlos laughs a little at her pleased sighs. “Try not to fall asleep before we get patched up.”

“You first. I really don’t feel that bad.” It’s not a lie. She feels like shit, sure, but she should be doing a lot worse. The fact that she’s not just groaning in agony from broken bones is a miracle. Or something else.

“Don’t try it.” Carlos returns with a first aid kit and kneels at the foot of the bed. “I’ve been wearing tactical gear this whole time, and you’ve been in _that_. Not that I’m complaining.” He adds with a smile that’s becoming familiar. She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling too. Their whole routine is a welcome normalcy.

It doesn’t change, even now as she starts pulling her clothes off without much consideration. Though her top is so ruined it can barely even be called clothing at this point. She leaves her undershirt on for politeness, hikes it up so they can take a look at her ribs. It’s hard to tell what’s dirt and what’s bruising. It hurts to breathe too hard, and it definitely hurts when Carlos presses a firm hand over her ribcage and feels around for anything cracked or crunching, relenting when he finds nothing. He’s not delicate with her, which she appreciates. She doesn’t have the heart to tell him she could do this herself. Jill hates being fussed over, but this is not that. This is for both of them.

Satisfied, she unbuttons her jeans and pulls them down to her thighs—they’re stupid tight, she really hadn’t dressed for the fucking apocalypse. Carlos hooks his fingers under the fabric and waits. Looks up at her, waiting for the okay. It’s considerate. It’s kind. She gives him a nod and stretches out her legs so her can pull them off the rest of the way.

All things considered, it’s not that bad. Which is to say it’s still pretty bad. Her skin is happy to breathe, at least, after a couple straight days in jeans. But that doesn’t do much for the solid layer of blood caked on.

Her right leg looks worse, maybe sprained, and Carlos spends a lot of time pressing at it this way and that, trying to figure out if they’ll need to set it or pop something back into place. He frowns every time she makes a little pained noise, looking so genuinely sorry. His thumb traces soothing circles on her other thigh. But nothing feels out of place, and eventually they decide just to leave it for the morning.

He would have been a good medic, she thinks, as he takes the same care with disinfecting and bandaging the rest of her injuries. His hands are warm and firm. Jill can imagine him treating his team with the same care.

Maybe not quite like this, though. The moments where his touch lingers a little longer, where her thighs press a little closer, where his eyes flicker up to hers almost shyly—they are tallying up. The warm and idle current that has been moving gently between them this past few days has suddenly risen to a fever pitch. She can feel his pulse through his hand.

 _Fuck it_ , Jill thinks, _we’re alive_. And reaches down to brush her fingers through his hair.

Carlos sighs in a way that heats her body from the inside, but he doesn’t pause in his task. He’s just a little bolder now. His hands wander, tracing the shape of her thighs, one snaking up her abdomen to feel the hard muscle there.

When all the worst of it is bandaged, he leans his head just slightly against her thigh, fingers toying and pulling at the fraying edge of her grey boxer briefs. “So,” he says carefully, and his mouth is so close it almost touches her skin. “We should probably talk about this.”

“We should.” Jill agrees, her hand moving instinctively to cradle the side of his face. Ready to hold him in place or to pull him closer. “I don’t want to ruin things just because we’re both feeling keyed up.”

“Right. Lots of ah, adrenaline going on right now.” His eyes keep darting between her face and her hand, unable to decide which to focus on. “If in the morning we decide it was a one-time thing, that’s okay.”

“Understood,” She strokes her thumb along his jaw. The feel of his beard is nice. “That said, though, I really do want to fuck you.”

That gets a reaction, a little blush rising in his cheeks before he can think to hide it. “Be gentle,” he’s smiling, nearly fluttering his lashes at her. “It’s my first time.”

Jill can’t help but laugh. She didn’t think she would laugh like this again. “Don’t worry. I’ll pull out.” He laughs a little in turn, the sound and soft breath muffled by her thighs.

And she expects them to move then, for him to get up or move to the bed, but. There Carlos remains, mouth pressed to her inner thigh. She shouldn’t be surprised, really. He looks up at her, eyes dark and burning. Not pale. Alive. “Jill? This okay?”

She nods, pets his face one more time before withdrawing her hands to tug her briefs down, ready to see where he’s going with this. Carlos laughs a little at her eagerness—“Come on, you’re not going to let me seduce you?”

“Mm, I don’t know. I’ve been told I’m hard to charm.” All this play isn’t exactly her usual thing, but it makes her smile. Of course he would be like this.

Taking that as permission, he kisses her thigh almost chastely. His hand is on her other leg, kneading—she flexes the muscle and feels him grip a little harder. So he really does like that. He retaliates with an open-mouthed kiss, the faintest pressure of teeth pulling a whine out of her. His beard scrapes as he works his way up her thigh, kisses a line of small marks there. They’ll be nothing compared to all the bruises she’s got, but Jill appreciates the effort all the same.

When he pulls away, he’s already breathing hard. “I was serious, you know. From the start. I saw you drive a car off a building and thought ‘damn, I need to get her number before we get out of here.’”

Jill laughs again, but it comes out shaky. “Finally, my talents are paying off.”

“And when you were fighting that thing, at the end,” His voice is low and husky, but earnest. “Don’t get me wrong, I was terrified. But it was also the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Is that weird? I don’t think I care if it’s weird.”

She smiles at the warmth, at the teasing, but mostly at the understanding that he gets it. It’s the same energy surging through her now, burning her up. The sheer feeling of survival. “You were pretty good for someone so distracted.”

“Oh, believe me, I was very focused on watching your back.” He slides his arms up the back of her thighs, feeling her up. Lets his hand come to rest on her lower back, firm at the base of her spine.

“Carlos. Seriously.” Jill takes the hint, tilts her hips up toward him. Inviting. “I can think of about ten better things you could be doing with your mouth right now. “

The first brush of his mouth against her is startlingly good. She allows her head to drop back, her eyes fluttering closed just for a second—but no, she wants to look at him. Carlos really is beautiful like this. Gazing up at her, waiting for a reaction. Such a showoff, even now.

“You said you were hot at the end, you— _oh_ , you have no idea.” Jill’s not usually much of a talker. Maybe he’s been a bad influence on her, though, because as soon as she starts she can’t seem to stop the words spilling out. It’s the way he looks at her, like he’s hanging on every word. “A-after you left. Before the roof. I fought—it doesn’t matter--I felt so fucking powerful-- and all I could think about was going up there and getting you on your knees.” She’s getting incoherent, she knows, but it’s hard to focus on anything but the ways he’s curling his tongue into her. Her voice is rising to a desperate snarl. “Like it was my fucking _reward_.”

She feels more than hears the sound dragged out of him, files that reaction away for further use. “I don’t know if I could have waited, if we hadn’t been interrupted. I would have bent you over right th—fuck, Carlos.”

He brings her hand to the back of his head and suddenly Jill can’t speak, not with the way he’s looking at her. Not with the way his fingers twine together with hers, encouraging her to hold tight. To pull. To give him everything she’s got—well, she knew he liked her strength.

Jill rolls her hips hard once, experimental. Then twice when she feels him shudder. Then again and again, all but riding him, the hard handsome plane of his jaw a perfect surface to grind against. And then his tongue moves just so, coaxing raw noises from her, and she can hardly think anymore.

It’s hers. Life and victory and the right to the pleasure that comes with it, it’s hers. She fought for it. She won. It’s hers.

Her orgasm snaps through her like the recoil of a gun, the heat of his mouth dragging her over an edge she barely realized was there. She might have yelled, but she can’t hear anything above her pulse. The force of it nearly doubles her over. She curls forward into Carlos, her hand fisted in his hair, her thighs tight and trembling around him as she shakes apart. He takes it well. Holds steady and works her through it with dedication.

It leaves her struggling to catch her breath. Twisting her fingers in his hair just to have something to ground her. Feels like she’s melted, her body relaxing in a way it hasn’t in days. Longer, probably.

Satisfied, Carlos pulls away enough that he can smile up at her, apparently enjoying her current state. There’s something possessive that she wishes she could ignore at the sight of him like this. Eyes glassy and half-lidded. His mouth slick and wet with her. “How’s that?”

“Fucking good.” Jill admits easily. The relief drags in her muscles, slow and pliant, but she still feels—something. Heat in her blood.

“Want more?” He leans up to kiss her hipbone. Then starts to follow the line of her body back down and god, there’s a thought. No doubt he would be happy to stay there, on his knees, as long as she wanted. But. She wants other things, too.

Jill pulls his hair again, just a little. Just because she can. “Get up here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Carlos grins, wolfish and sweet and she drags him up to kiss her. He’s warm everywhere. His hands stay steady on her lower back and she wraps a leg around him, pulling him closer.

Their hips slot nicely together and it’s like the strike of a match every time they move, the slow drag of it catching fire. Her body feels alight and hungry. She licks into his mouth, tastes herself. Better that than the taste of blood.

On an impulse, Jill pulls away to kiss at his jaw, under the line of his beard. She’s rewarded by the catch of his breath, the way his hands clutch harder at her. So her instincts were right. Smiling against his skin, she sucks a blooming mark into his neck. He’s beautiful. He could have been carved out of marble, the vital, elegant curve of his muscles so perfectly built for fighting. For survival.

And she fears for the hundredth time that day that maybe the cure wasn’t perfect after all, because something compels her to bury her face in the juncture of neck and shoulder and breathe in his scent. Blood and sweat and violence and human skin underneath it. His blood pulsing there. She can hear it. Smell it. A raw, animal sensation curls in her stomach.

She bites down.

Not hard, of course. Not enough to break the skin. Just the bruising pressure and scrape of her teeth and his hips stutter against her. This time he moans at it, openly, unashamed. His hand goes to the back of her head, tight in her hair. But he’s not pulling her off. So maybe both of them have their wires a little crossed after everything.

“If I didn’t know better,” he murmurs low, tilting his head up to better bare his neck. Letting her closer. Trusting her. “I’d think you wanted to eat me.”

Jill stands under the water until it stops running red and brown and other sickly colors into the drain. Without the layer of filth she can see the damage more clearly. Mottled bruises cover almost every inch of her body, the worst along her ribs. Her legs and hands are scraped raw from crawling. The gash on her chest still looks nasty, opening up just beneath her collarbone. But it’s not as bad as she thought. She remembers getting that one, and it really should be worse.

The edges of it are already tight and pink and shiny. Healing. Faster than it should. It itches.

Her own flesh writhes within her. She can see it wriggling out of the wound, uncontained now by her skin. Slick tendrils of meat growing, dividing, mutating, all rabid hungry energy, unable to slow down, unable to stop. Her heart is pounding. She wants to scream but can only breath fast, frantic, whimpering as it creeps down her arm. She can see it starting everywhere now, in the other injuries. The flesh knits itself back together and grows and rots and heals and rots again. She knows how this goes. The vaccine didn’t work. It was just a long incubation. That thing has only bided its time. She knows how this ends. She can pull the trigger, she won’t be soft, won’t make him do it, she can get her gun—

And then she blinks, and her skin is only skin again, distorted by the rivulets of water.

When she emerges from the shower Carlos is half asleep on the bed in his boxers and undershirt. He looks good. Healthy. Alive.

He blinks into alertness as she walks in, casts an appreciative look over her naked body. He might look peaceful, and it’s as real as anything, but she knows their guns are tucked under the bed, just waiting to be grabbed.

“You were in there for a while.” His voice is warm but careful, the unspoken _are you okay?_ running underneath. “Hope it was nice?”

Jill snaps her towel at him playfully. It’s a calculated move. “Saved some hot water for you.” It doesn’t fool him, of course. He registers her non-answer but lets it go with a nod.

While Carlos washes up she steals his spot on the bed, tucks herself into the imprint of his body. The lingering warmth is proof he was alive.

They end up fucking on and off for the rest of the night. It surprises her, how much energy she has. How hungry she still feels. When they’re too sore and tired even for that they just lay still, huddled together, enjoying the human warmth. Letting their bodies remember the concept of rest.

Jill doesn’t sleep. Instead she spends a lot of time thinking. About what she’s going to do next, and when that comes up with too many unknowns she turns to simpler things. She thinks about the rawest drives of any living thing, about survival and reproduction.

 _Humans really think we have it figured out, huh_. She thinks, her eyes trailing over Carlos’ sleeping frame. He looks surprisingly delicate like this. But he pulled through. They both did. What Nicholai had said—about her being soft—did nothing to change that fact. She pulled the trigger. She came out alive. And he didn’t. Fuck self-preservation: Carlos had waited for her. Had saved her, when he didn’t have to.

Maybe all the teeth and claws and scales and brains and guns are the same in the end. You either have the will to survive, or you don’t. That thing understood this better than its creators. It had the same tenacity as her.

Satisfied with her conclusion, she closes her eyes. She won’t sleep but she is, at least, dreamless.

And in the crater that was once a city, cells begin to divide again. Flesh pulls itself back together. The very persistence of life remains.


End file.
